Monday, February 07, 2005
1967 NYT CITED
Dennis Glover wrote a few days ago about the sinister means by which we conservative attack dogs come by our talking points:
Starting as pseudo-academic articles in Paddy MGuinness’s Quadrant and the IPA Review, ideas travel down the intellectual food chain via broadsheet opinion columns, to the Melbourne Herald-Sun’s Andrew Bolt and Sydney Daily Telegraph’s Piers Akerman and on to Sydney-basers Alan Jones, John Laws and others.
Like a brood of baby crocodiles flushed down a suburban toilet, these ideas have taken a subterranean journey through the sewers and emerged fully formed on main street, to devour the unwary. Listen to the punters from marginal electorates on talkback radio, read the reports of political focus groups, talk to your cab driver; they’re all repeating the opinions, boiled down to a populist essence, of some right-wing intellectual.
Whatever, stupid. By comparison, left-wing talking points travel the opposite path, beginning in the Daily Kos toilet:
[in case you haven’t been keeping up with  developments in Vietnam from 40 years ago...]
U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
“Wow,â€? responded a Kos kommenter. “The parallels are eerie. The voter turn-out, insurgents, ‘election’ of a US backed group, it all sounds so similar.â€? Wrote another: “Hopefully, we will see this being quoted other than in DailyKos.â€?
Wish granted! Here’s Paul McGeough in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald:
US apologists hate Vietnam comparisons, but here’s a sobering report from The New York Times of September 4, 1967 ...
And Mike Carlton in the same edition of the same newspaper:
You get some interesting stuff on the internet, such as this excerpt from a story published in The New York Times back in 1967 ...
And Scott Burchill in Monday’s Melbourne Age:
Before Bush’s supporters become too intoxicated by the historical significance of the January 30 ballot in Iraq, and assume that legitimacy has been conferred upon a new Iraqi polity, they might reflect on the following New York Times report from September 4, 1967 ...
And Burchill again at Margo Kingston’s Webdiary (where he’s described as “a lecturer in International Relations at Deakin Univeresity�):
... they might reflect on the following New York Times report from 4 September, 1967 ...
This is the best material these people have; that nearly 40 years ago an election in Vietnam was reported positively, but turned out badly. That proves the election in Iraq is doomed! Well done, Scott, Paul, and Mike.